Matt Mankins SM '03
Used Bookstore Owner Revitalizes Industry with Ingenuity and Code
The first thing you notice about alumnus Matt Mankins SM '03, is that he doesn't look like Don Quixote. Yet the 29-year-old MIT grad, who earned his master's in media arts and sciences, has embarked on a quixotic quest to rescue a dying industry: used bookstores.
"Rescue an industry?" Mankins repeats the question with a bemused grin. "No, I wouldn't describe it that way. I'm just someone who loves books and sees a problem that technology may be able to solve."
Okay, maybe its hyperbolic to say he's rescuing the industry; then again, how many MIT graduates have taken their diplomas and then opened up a used bookstore?
Located in Inman Square, once a haven for dusty old bookstores, Mankins's store, Lorem Ipsum, sits on the corner of Hampshire and Tremont Streets in Cambridge, nestled halfway between two world-famous universities. Of course, being near Harvard and MIT is no advantage to bookstores any longer.
Sadly, it's a different era for books these days. There was a time when Cambridge was noted for its used bookstores. Not any more. Littered among the carnage of the dot-com boom was a host of used bookstores that after years of struggling with rising rents, the emergence of huge discount chain stores, a shrinking population of people who actually read, and then, finally, the Internet-well, eventually it just got to be too much. Even Boston's famed used bookstore Avenue Victor Hugo, a city landmark for nearly 30 years, was forced to close its retail shop in the summer of 2004.
Mankins steps into this dying industry, however, with a good deal of poise. "I have helped launch a few businesses previously based on software I have written," says the soft-spoken Mankins. "So there is some familiarity here."
Those businesses continue to prosper, so Mankins decided to combined his love of books with his background in software engineering. In short order, he developed a "small piece of software specifically designed to help a used bookstore compete globally."
Globally? Used books?
"In today's retail world, a bookstore has to compete locally and globally," Mankins says. "Amazon and other online distributors brought a disruptive technology into a nontechnical industry. Most bookstore owners didn't have the technical background needed to compete in this arena. My intention has been to build something very efficient and affordable. If it works here, it should be portable to other used bookstores."
Mankins's impetus for starting his used bookstore was necessity; or as one local newspaper described it.
"After graduation, I lost my graduate office," laughs Mankins. "I suddenly discovered I had more books than would fit in my apartment." He began to sell some of the books online, in part to appease his significant other, and in part just to have living space. His online retailing experience quickly revealed two major headaches impeding used bookstore owners: marketing their inventory through the numerous online distribution channels and developing a competitive pricing strategy that can distinguish commodities from rare finds.
Mankins first wrote a program to list books automatically with the leading used book distributors, such as Amazon, Abebooks, and Half-Price Books. He followed that up with a program that prices books based on supply and demand, using Amazon's massive shrinking database. The program then queries other sites to get a market average.
"Used books are a commodity," says Mankins, "until they start to disappear. Then they can grow in value. My programs were designed to take a time-consuming task, one that seemed overwhelming to a bookstore owner, and make it simple."
To demonstrate, Mankins randomly opens a box of "new inventory." It's a cardboard box with about 70 used books inside. He grabs a book, scans the bar code on the back, which immediately drops all the pertinent facts into Lorem Ipsum's database. It also triggers the online search of prices from competitors around the globe. In a matter of seconds, an average price of $3.50 comes back. A few more clicks, and suddenly Lorem Ipsum has updated its listings with the major distributors. The whole process takes less than 30 seconds.
"Managing inventory is a time-consuming process for bookstore owners," says Mankins. "To compete online, this process has to be made efficient. After that, it's a matter of making sure your product is priced based on sound principles, like supply and demand. It's Business: 101, but the technology hasn't been developed for this niche of the book industry."
Lorem Ipsum hopes to change that soon. Mankins says his intention is to perfect the technology at his own store and then offer it to other used bookstore owners.
So why the bricks-and-mortar store if the solution is technical? Mankins seems surprised by the question.
"Look around," he says quietly. There's a woman reading in one corner. A man sits near the window with a small stack of books he is contemplating. Another person with three books in her arms is meandering toward the register. "It's impossible to replace the tactile enjoyment that comes from perusing a book in your own hands. Bookstores will survive because that's something the online world can't replace...at least not yet."
Amen, brother, amen.
By Jim Wolken
